


I've Grown Accustomed to Donna Moss

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-27
Updated: 2006-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-30 11:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15096008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: Josh wakes up from an extremely weird dreaminvolving musical theatre; Donna and CJ are beingSusan Faludi and Naomi Wolf; and the President callsJosh "Gerbil Boy".





	I've Grown Accustomed to Donna Moss

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

 

TITLE: I've Grown Accustomed to Donna Moss (1/1)

AUTHOR: Laurel A. 

RATING: PG (couple of words you can say on TV only  
after 9pm)

SPOILERS: Brief specific references to minor details  
from In The Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part Two, The  
Portland Trip, The Stackhouse Filibuster, and 17  
People, but I think that's it, honest. I think.

ARCHIVE: Sure, just let me know.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters. They  
belong to Aaron Sorkin, NBC, et al. Which is probably  
a good thing, because I am betting Brad Whitford  
wouldn't like having to sing Broadway songs on TV,  
although maybe he would � a girl can dream, can't  
she?!

SUMMARY: Josh wakes up from an extremely weird dream  
involving musical theatre; Donna and CJ are being  
Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf; and the President calls  
Josh "Gerbil Boy".

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & OTHER STUFF: I had this idea to do  
"Bad and Cheesy Song Fic" over the summer when we will  
be faced with re-runs for several months. But, since  
we have had SO much time on our hands waiting for new  
episodes these days, this one just sort of happened.  
And, like a bad car accident, I had to watch it write  
itself. Thanks to Michelle for encouraging Bad  
Broadway Fic! Now, on with the show......

*************************

So, I am lying here in my bed at 6:11 in the morning  
trying to piece together the events of the previous  
night. I know, it sounds like something really smutty  
happened, and as much as my sexually frustrated mind  
and body wishes that were so, it unfortunately isn't  
the case.

I am really still waking up and my head is foggy from  
the dream I was just having which, I think, involved  
me dancing with Donna on some sort of Broadway-like  
stage.

But I'm really wondering here are two things. The  
first is, what would prompt me to have such a "girly"  
romantic dream; and two, what exactly was going on in  
that dream, because I have just woken up to the fact  
(both literally and figuratively) that I am in love  
with Donnatella Moss.

Ah wait, last night is starting to come back to me  
(wavy Wayne's World flash back effects here)...

We are riding in the Presidential limo, the big one  
that can seat like an entire baseball team, including  
the coaches and the "John 3:16" guy with the rainbow  
wig. I am sitting next to a window, Sam is on my  
right, and Donna is on the other side of him. How  
come they always seem to sit next to each other?  
Anyway, Toby, CJ, and the President of course, are all  
there as well.

We're on our way to the Kennedy Center to see the  
American College Theatre Festival finalists perform.  
This has become an annual tradition because President  
Bartlet considers it a "golden cultural and  
educational opportunity" for the staff. While it is  
usually a pretty uneventful, if boring evening, at  
least we get away from work for a few hours. However,  
this ride to the theatre was about to turn into a  
battle of the sexes.

Donna normally delights in attending these theatrical  
field trips; drama was one of her 78 assorted minors  
after all. She and the President usually drone  
happily on about Shakespeare or the newest play by Tom  
Stopford, or whatever ever his name is. But, since we  
are on our way to see My Fair Lady on this particular  
occasion, we are getting quite the feminist lecture.

Donna is has rallied the female members of our party  
into something of a Women's Crusade. CJ is playing  
Susan Faludi to Donna's Naomi Wolf and they are tag  
teaming us guys pretty well.

"Even though Lerner and Loewe wrote the musical in  
1955, when it was the social norm for men to go to  
work and for women to stay at home to raise their 2.5  
children in the suburbs, the fact that the youth of  
America is performing this chauvinistic piece of  
propaganda from the dark ages of the feminist movement  
is repugnant," Donna haughtily informs us all in a  
really long run on sentence.

"The youth of America?" Sam questions as he gives a  
little grin.

"You just watch it there Sparky," CJ jumps in from her  
seat just opposite me "Donna's right, in Pygmalion --  
the play that My Fair Lady is adapted from for all you  
literary nudniks in the audience -- Shaw is attempting  
a critical look at social hierarchy. Pygmalion ends  
with Eliza rejecting Higgins and building a life with  
the less socially powerful, but besotted Freddie. She  
opens a successful flower shop and is the matriarch of  
a family."

"Score one for the sisterhood," Donna cheers her on.

"Sadly, Lerner and Loewe mutilated Shaw's ending.  
They've got Eliza bringing Higgins his slippers!" CJ  
says capping off her tirade.

Too bad Ainsley isn't here to help out Sam and me.  
After hearing her go off on the ERA, I am sure she  
would have something to say in defense of these Lerner  
and Loewe guys

But, just when I think we are going to get a break  
from the Sister Suffragettes, Donna continues on, "In  
My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins takes Eliza on as a pet  
project; as if she were a trainable dog. Betting  
money on his ability to alter her behavior no less!"

CJ picks up the rallying cry saying, "And to make  
their misogynistic female/male paradigm even worse,  
she loses what ever sense of self or self worth she  
had as she is brainwashed into thinking that she likes  
being trained. Not to mention the disgustingly  
predictable ending where she falls in love with the  
arrogant jack-ass."

"You go girl!" Toby sneers from his relative position  
of safety sitting next to the President on the other  
side of the limo. Meanwhile, it is slowly dawning on  
me that Donna must have told CJ what I said about her  
dating those losers. This means they might gang up on  
me, and now I'm getting really worried.

"Plain and simple, it's just a bad image to present to  
young women, and men for that matter. It is as bad as  
Pretty Woman," concludes Donna.

I choose that moment to let my wise cracking mouth get  
away from me and make a remark about not wanting to  
see Professor Higgins on stage with a gerbil.

Donna reaches over Sam and smacks me on the arm, hard.  
But, just in time to save me from a real beating, the  
President finally speaks up in that fatherly, I Am The  
Leader Of The Country way that he has.

"What the story celebrates is not romance but  
intelligence. It is about being liberated from  
ignorance and set free to realize your potential. The  
story is about optimism; it's about possibilities.  
Possibilities for everyone, not just those with social  
and economic status."

"Shaw, and indeed, Lerner and Loewe, pose that a poor  
person, when given the same opportunities as the upper  
classes, will achieve admirably. Something this  
administration firmly believes in, I might add."

All of us in the car get the Presidential stare from  
him after that last sentence as he continues, "As for  
you ladies over there � yes, I called you ladies, you  
are women also, but as I am a gentleman, you are all  
ladies to me -- Eliza returns to Higgins in the end  
not because he has reformed his attitudes, but because  
he has defended them. She respects his stubbornness."

"And even though the show isn't really about romance,  
Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle are just about  
the most romantic couple you will find. Pay  
particular attention to Eliza singing I Could Have  
Danced All Night. The song begins by referring simply  
to a dance of joy for life, but it subtly becomes  
clear that it's Higgins himself she could have danced  
all night with."

"These two people fall in love with their heads,  
instead of the usual parts. So, take that Gerbil  
Boy." He says this last part directly to me and while  
I can't believe that the President just used the  
phrase "Gerbil Boy," I am more concerned with how I  
can prevent this from becoming my new nickname around  
the West Wing.

Before I have a chance to rebut the rodent comment,  
Donna jumps in, "But, Mr. President, Higgins hardly  
even notices Eliza as a woman, much less as a person,  
until she is gone and isn't there to bring him his  
slippers. To him, Eliza is just part of an experiment  
that turns into some sick co-dependent relationship,"  
Donna concludes in defense of women everywhere, or at  
least I am sure that's what she is thinking.

Just then the limo slows down and we are at the  
Kennedy Center, thank God. Since we are running late,  
we hustle in and find our seats with out any more  
skirmishes in the battle of the sexes.

The show, just as I had suspected, is horrible. Not  
that I don't appreciate a good musical, but I'm really  
more of a Rodgers and Hammerstein man. But Jesus,  
don't tell Sam! With his "I was Recording Secretary  
for the Gilbert and Sullivan Society" thing, he might  
want to, you know, go see some dinner theatre or  
something.

I try to occupy my self by reviewing my strategy to  
knock down the Republicans' latest attempt to expand  
oil drilling off the California coast. And I admit  
it, I am feeling triumphant that I am have managed to  
sit between Sam and Donna and am sneaking the  
occasional peek at her. She is, of course, continuing  
to fume over the content of the show, and rightly so.  
But, her silhouette looks amazingly soft and beautiful  
in the glow of the stage lights.

Then we get to the part at the end where Henry Higgins  
sings I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face and I start to  
freak out. I realize that I am Henry Higgins and  
Donna is my Eliza Doolittle. I don't mean that when I  
hired her she was selling flowers and has stage make  
up on her face that's supposed to be soot or grime  
from the street or something. But, I realize that my  
attitude towards her is kind of like Henry's.

After I hired her, I began to view her as someone I  
was molding, shaping, and training. I was going to  
take this young, naive, Midwestern little girl and  
impart my Beltway wisdom to her which would, no doubt,  
make her a wiser and better person. God, I am such a  
pig! I guess I wasn't completely able to tune out her  
feminist rantings.

Uh oh (wavy Wayne's World flashback effects here as I  
return to present time), my dream is coming back to me  
more clearly now (wavy Wayne's World effects start to  
fill the room again signaling the start of the dream  
sequence this time...)

I find myself wearing a pretty regular button-down  
shirt, some horrible ascot tie and a tweed blazer with  
elbow patches. I am smoking a pipe, and sitting in  
some kind of library place. To my horror, I realize  
that not only do I know the word ascot, but I also  
have no pants on. What's up with that always  
happening in dreams � although this is different,  
because usually when I have no pants on in a dream, I  
have shown up completely unprepared to a meeting with  
a Senator or the dream is of a totally different  
nature, and I am not even going there.

Anyway, just as I am taking all this in and wondering  
whose clothes I have on and just who might be wearing  
my pants, I hear music start to play. I look over to  
where it's coming from and see some guy holding a  
white stick gesturing at a bunch of college-age kids  
playing musical instruments. Ah, he must be the  
conductor. He frantically waves his stick at me, and  
it is at that point that it hits me. I am Henry  
Higgins and I am supposed to be singing.

I open my mouth to tell the conductor guy just what he  
can do with that white stick of his, but instead of  
"shove that thing up your ass," coming out, I start to  
sing. The music takes hold of me and I seem to  
automatically know the words and it all feels kind of  
fun and natural. I am singing my heart out, and as  
real as it feels, I am still me, so I'm also giving  
the audience some commentary on the side.

I've grown accustomed to her face  
She almost makes the day begin (Although if she  
brought me coffee, that would make it begin so much  
easier)  
I've grown accustomed to the tune she whistles night  
and noon (Some damned Yo Yo Ma piece no doubt)  
Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs

Are second nature to me now  
Like breathing out and breathing in  
I was serenely independent and content before we met  
(okay, except for that bad Mandy phase)  
Surely I could always be that way again and yet  
I've grown accustomed to her looks, accustomed to her  
voice  
Accustomed to her face

I'm very grateful she's a woman and so easy to forget  
Rather like a habit one can always break and yet  
I've grown accustomed to the trace of something in the  
air  
Accustomed to her face

All of a sudden the music shifts into the tune of I  
Could Have Danced All Night and Donna appears at the  
top of some stairs on stage left in a single  
spotlight. It reminds me of those school pictures  
from the 70's where they superimpose your image over  
your own shoulder from a different angle. But, it all  
feels some how supernaturally normal in a freakish  
way.

Donna starts to descend the stairs; I meet her at the  
bottom, taking her into my embrace as we dance across  
the stage. She feels so good in my arms and I forget  
for a moment that I am Henry Higgins and she is Eliza  
Doolittle and that we are supposed to be in this awful  
sexist show. Although, I do become suddenly and  
painfully aware of my lack of pants and I think it was  
about then that I woke up and realized that I have  
become accustomed to Donnatella Moss.

END

Note: Most of the analysis of My Fair Lady comes from  
a detailed review by Roger Ebert and can be found on  
the Chicago Sun Times website (www.suntimes.com). I  
also found bits and pieces of information from lots of  
different websites, none of which I wrote down, so if  
I used something that you thought up or wrote, thank  
you and I give you full credit. And wouldn't that be  
amazing if I happened to use something from a  
particular website about My Fair Lady and the author  
happened to read Josh and Donna fan fiction! If that  
is the case, you had better e-mail me because that has  
got to be THE best "small world" story I have ever  
heard.

  


End file.
